I'll Remember You
by Ris Fallon
Summary: Deep in her heart, Kairi knows there is something important that she's forgetting. It haunts her dreams every night and consumes her thoughts. She wants to know who the boy is that the shadows keep consuming, and is determined to remember his name one day


**Author's note:** I've been in a very down mood, and I've had this song on my mind lately. _My Heart Will Go On_ by Celine Dion (sp?), the song from the Titanic. This one shot is inspired mostly by that song, but I don't really have the energy to do a real songfic right now. I suggest listening to the song if you don't know it. It's really beautiful. It's one of three songs that makes me really cry. I kind of like how this fanfic turned out. It's the time slot just before Kairi asks Selphie Sora's name and what she remembers about him, the night before to be exact.

_Kairi?_

_Who's there? __Her eyebrows knit together in her sleep as she turned on her side. The brunette kicked her legs as she ran in her dream, growing more frustrated as the boy calling her name grew farther and farther away. He was with Riku, and they were grinning. __Wait for me. Riku!_

_Keep up, Kai__, the fair-haired boy yelled. He was older than them, though he didn't always act it. She growled as she tried to push herself harder._Faster, faster!_ She mustn't lose them again!_

_Riku! Stop,__ she cried, reaching out a hand in anguish as they ran off again. The other half-turned, his face in shadows_._ He was a friend, she remembered... A very dear friend. Maybe from a very long time ago, on a different island. Maybe he knew who she was.__ Stop!!!_

_You have to do better than that, Kai__, the brunette chuckled, and he gently shoved Riku's arm before setting off again. Quitters never win! You remember that, don't you?_

_Did she remember that? Duh, she remembered that. Riku had said that all the time, teasing, whenever she got upset that she never had a fair shot at winning. He said the exact same thing to Selphie when she got weepy. And he just rolled his eyes when Tidus or Wakka started up. _

_What she _didn't_ remember was that boy! __Wait for me,__ she said again in desperation. He just smiled._

_Come on, Kai,__ he said softly, his voice low with a similar desperation. He paused to turn to her, the shadows already beginning to swallow the rest of him. She couldn't make out even the color of his eyes, though they glinted in her dream's semi-darkness. She whimpered in her sleep as Riku stepped into the shadows the other was reluctant to surrender to. She didn't like being left alone, all alone on this stupid island with nothing but butchered memories. __You have to do a little better than this. I know you can do it._

_Do what__, she demanded angrily, abandoning the fruitless chase and throwing her hands firmly on her hips. But he just shook his head and looked at her. Although she couldn't make out his face, she felt as though she were losing another friend. A tear came to her eye, and she brushed it angrily away. Why wouldn't he answer her._

_I know you can do it__, he repeated. And then he was gone._

-----

Kairi sat upright in her bed, panting heavily as though she'd been running a race. By the pale moonlight streaming across her scant covers, she knew that it was still quite late- or quite early, depending on your mind set. She looked at the clock, the red digital numbers blinking 3:30. AM, of course. She sighed, placing a hand over her heart as though she could muffle the sound of its beating that way. It was thudding in her ears, a panicked war cry.

**Don't let them go!**

She closed her blue-gray eyes as she tried to remember why she'd awakened. It had been dark, and Riku... she'd been running after Riku. It wasn't fair. Even in her dreams she couldn't win against him! It made her miss him- his laugh, his smile, his overprotective glare when the others teased her (even when only jokingly). But her brotherly figure had vanished a long time ago, almost 2 years, taking with him the only answers she had about this mysterious boy that appeared in her dreams more and more frequently. Kairi squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to recall his face or even his eyes, but nothing came to her. Even her dreams were keeping secrets from her now.

She scowled and disentangled herself from her bed sheets before swinging her legs over the edge and standing up. She was only clothed in an overly long white tee-shirt that she had stolen from Tidus, but since it went mid-thigh on her, she didn't bother change into something more appropriate before climbing out her window.

She remembered how scared Selphie had been the first time Kairi had done that infront of her, but the redhead was good at keeping her balance on the gently sloped roof. She perched herself carefully so she was hugging her knees tightly to her chest. She wondered what she looked like, sitting there being bathed in the pale moonlight. Like a very sleepy angel, Riku had teased her once. She'd fallen asleep there, another time she'd been woken up by her dreams. Sometimes not even Riku knew what to make of them, and he would sit with her if she called him or he spotted her from his own window.

She wondered where he'd gone off to. Somewhere important, she remembered. But she couldn't remember where to. She buried her face in her knees. If he were here, would he remember that boy any better than she did? Or was he really just a ghost from yet another past she couldn't remember?

"What the hell?!"

She let out a quiet growl of frustration, running an aggravated hand through her hair as she looked up at the stars. He had told her to try harder, whoever he was. Maybe... maybe in time, her heart would remember him again. Without really thinking about it, her hand formed in a fist over her chest as her face saddened. She hoped so. Her heart hurt, trying to remember him... It was as though something were deliberately stopping her. Was it really such a painful memory?

"I'll remember you," she murmured quietly, looking towards the open ocean. "Some day." From where she sat, she could just barely glimpse the small island where they all played. Sometimes they still went out there after school, dragging their small one-man skiffs from the pier and pushing them out to open water. She had a feeling he had played there too, with them. She would ask Selphie, she decided, to see if Selphie remembered the other boy. When she strained her heart and mind, she could see a shadow standing beside Riku. She was sure it was the boy from her dream, and she looked out at the island with a fierce kind of determination.

She'd write a letter. She would seal it in a bottle and cast it out to the sea. If the boy existed, which she was sure he did, it would reach him. He'd know she was waiting for him, no matter how long. In her heart, she knew it was true. And she was sure Riku was with him, or would be soon. She wouldn't go back to that island till she could remember that boy's name. Deep in her heart, she could see her dream smile at her. She was close, so close...

_Just a little farther, Kairi!_

Taking care to keep her balance, Kairi crawled back through her bedroom window and silently closed the latch that locked it in place. It was nearly 4:30 now, and she had to be awake in a few hours for school. But she knew what she wanted to write, she'd known it since she'd decided to remember that boy's name.

Digging through her desk drawer, she withdrew from it a single sheet of paper. She brushed it with her finger tips before extracting from the same drawer a black ballpoint pen. She bit her lip till she winced in pain as she touched the pen to the paper, and began to write:

_Thinking of you, wherever you are._

_We pray for our sorrows to end,_

_and hope that our hearts will blend._

_Now I will step forward to realize this wish._

_And who knows:_

_starting a new journey may not so hard_

_or maybe it has already begun._

_There are many worlds,_

_but they share the same sky-_

_one sky, one destiny._

She had to rewrite this three times before sh e was satisfied with her letter. Her first attempt had begun with "_To the boy I can't remember, I harbor feelings that I can never forget."_ But she hastily balled the paper and tossed it aside, rejected. After all, she didn't want him to feel bad because she couldn't remember his name! The same problem arose with the second piece, when she wrote "Dear..." And remembered she _couldn't_ remember his name. To her, this was becoming quite problematic.

It was 5:30 when she finally slipped the paper into a glass liquor bottle they'd found empty and sea-washed on the beach one day long ago and corked it shut. And then Kairi slid it into her shoulder bag that she brought to school before sliding back under her covers, content.

Maybe it would take days, or weeks, or months. Maybe it would even take years, but she would remember his name. She would remember everything about him, no matter how long it took or how hard it was. She would remember his face, his voice, his favorite food... He was someone important to her, she could feel it.

"Some day," she murmured, closing her eyes and turning on her side, so her back was to her school bag. "I'll go back to the island, some day... I won't go there without the memory of you to take with me."

_You don't have to go that far, Kairi,_ the boy from her dream chuckled, but she knew he was happy. Deep inside her heart, she knew he was waiting for her to remember him again. Because there are some things that the heart remembers, even when the body forgets. And how could her heart forget him?


End file.
